Some more Senior Photos!

[Cely]

Just a couple from today

C&C is welcome!

1.

2.

 

[Breanna]

Skin is waaay too soft. I loath the flower in the mouth. Sorry, not much I care for in either one of these images.

 

[camz]

I think the composition is decent. I do agree with the skin having too much surface blur...just my preference.

 

[bdavis]

Yeah she is really airbrushed....kind of ruins it for me. Also I believe the second is underexposed.

 

[Cely]

Hey thanks for the comments everyone. Ill keep your C&C in my thoughts.

@Breanna- thats actually a weed. . The location that I was taking these pictures at had no flowers or anything remotely attractive. So this is the best we came up with. More of an eyesore than anything though.

 

[ANDS!]

How "bad" could her natural skin be that you had to take the skin smoothing that far? Shes got no pores. How does her skin breath? I would reduce the opacity of your skin-smoothing layer to bring back some detail that was lost her. No imperfections are more often than not more distracting than a lot. Our eyes are trained to LOOK for blemishes; finding none we kind of start thinking "something isn't right here. . ." instead of "Hey, sweet photograph."

 

[Cely]

Her skin is actually really smooth in the first place. I just liked the look, maybe I applied to many pixels when I did gaussian blur.

Here is the image straight from my camera.

 

[ocular]

All you need to do is some healing.........

 

[musicaleCA]

Yeah. Way too much blurring indeed. It's not so much about too many pixels with the blur; just go nuts with it and then decrease the opacity of that layer until it's reasonable.

What could use a bit more fixing is the skin shine.

 

[Cely]

@ MusicaleCA-Ok, I will play with the opacity. I'm not too skilled with photoshop, so these things help a lot. Also, how would you recommend skin shine?

@everyone else- Thanks for the C&C everyone. But I have another question. Are you all telling me the image is too airbrushed for a senior picture? Or would this amount of airbrushing be seen with different types of portraiture (like fashion photography, etc.)? Or is it just overkill on the airbrushing in general. Thanks in advance.

 

[ocular]

Well that's technically not air brushing in ps. And yes that's too much blur in any application. The idea is to make it look as natural as possible. Do you understand layers, and how to adjust the opacity ?

 

[camz]

@everyone else- Thanks for the C&C everyone. But I have another question. Are you all telling me the image is too airbrushed for a senior picture? Or would this amount of airbrushing be seen with different types of portraiture (like fashion photography, etc.)? Or is it just overkill on the airbrushing in general. Thanks in advance.

I think for this case you would've been fine without applying blur to the skin because her skin already looks pretty smooth. To me skin blur applies more when there are major blemishes.

 

[musicaleCA]

I've always felt that major blemishes are better fixed with the heal brush, with low opacity cloning to get the ball rolling first (pimples are particularly best dealt with by cloning a little over them first and then healing; the heal brush behaves a little better). Gaussian blur should only soften pores (great for lessening stubble and getting rid of blackheads too).

Skin shine essentially just involves using the burn tool on the highlights where the skin shine is occurring. That's the quick and dirty way of doing it, at least. A little (really) low opacity cloning and healing can help to get some more texture back if detail was clipped, but that's a bit harder to pull off.

 

[Cely]

Yes I understand layers and opacity. I am going out to take pictures of another client today, when I get time, I will edit her with all the advice from you all and post a picture. Thank you very much, your criticism really helps.